About Keri Hulme
Keri Ann Ruhi Hulme was a New Zealand novelist, poet and short-story writer. She also wrote under the pen name Kai Tainui. Her novel The Bone People won the Booker Prize in 1985; she was the first New Zealander to win the award, and also the first writer to win the prize for a debut novel. Hulme's writing explores themes of isolation, postcolonial and multicultural identity, and Māori, Celtic, and Norse mythology. Hulme was the first New Zealander to win the Booker Prize and also the first writer to win the prize for their debut novel. In 1985, Hulme was writer-in-residence at the University of Canterbury and in 1990 she was awarded the 1990 Scholarship in Letters from the Queen Elizabeth Arts Council Literature Committee for two years. The book was published in February 1984 and won the 1984 New Zealand Book Award for Fiction and the Booker Prize in 1985.
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